1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a scatterable composition for the dry cleaning of textiles, particularly carpets, which contains cellulose powder as an adsorbent.
2. Description of Related Art
In addition to shampoos, powder-form cleaning compositions have recently been used to an increasing extent for cleaning carpets and other textile coverings in situ, which has the advantage of not leaving any ridges and drying more quickly. Cleaning powders of this type contain as their principal constituents surfactants and adsorbents and also relatively large quantities of water in loosely bound form. It is assumed that the surfactants, together with the water present, are responsible for detaching the dirt particles from the fibers and transporting them to the adsorbent which, after evaporation of the water, is removed together with the soil by brushing or vacuum cleaning. Various materials have been proposed as adsorbents, including for example diatomaceous earth, fuller's earth, talcum, sawdust, ground cork and ground corncobs (U.S. Pat. No. 3,418,243), bleached wood powder particularly maple (Swiss Pat. No. 461,685) and finely divided silica (U.S. Pat. No. 3,630,919).
Of these adsorbents, only wood powders have acquired any real practical significance, although cleaning powders containing wood powder as adsorbents are not always satisfactory in their cleaning power and are very dingy in color, even where bleached wood powders are used.
More recent developments resulted in the proposal to use zeolite powder or synthetic resin foam powders, particularly powders of urea-formaldehyde foams, as adsorbents. Cleaning compositions based on adsorbents such as these are colorless and, in some cases, have a much better cleaning effect than products based on sawdust, although they also show certain disadvantages. Thus, the cleaning compositions according to German application No. 25 44 605, which contain the naturally very finely divided zeolite as adsorbent, tend to generate dust in abundance and to discolor the carpets while compositions based on urea-formaldehyde resin (UFR), of the type described in British Pat. No. 2,001,099 and in British Pat. No. 2,134,917, necessitate a number of special additives and measures during their application to restrict the emission of formaldehyde to an acceptable level. Proposals to add these adsorbents onto inert carrier materials (cf. European Pat. application No. 62 536 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,440,661) have had no effect on those disadvantages.